What is appropriate/useful to share in a relationship? What tools can I use to let go of unproductive emotions? Instruction on taking and sending. What is the point of resting with the breath? Prayer and meditation. Seeking clarity in relationships by listening to one’s heart. Working with self-hatred. Please note that due to technical difficulties the audio quality of this recording is uneven.

passage from article: The final challenge of habituated patterns is to question direct experience. How do we know? How can we trust this knowing, which is totally beyond the ordinary conditioned experience of life? Like Buddha Shakyamuni, we turn to no external reference and live in the knowing. We rest in presence, in the very mystery of being itself.

passage from text: Now, as you experience this vague knowing in which there is no thought or movement, look at what knows that this is happening, look at what is mentally or emotionally inert, and rest there. Then you experience an awareness that is free from thought and movement, has no sense of inside or outside, and is utterly clear and transparent, like space. Experience and experiencing are not separate. Yet you are unshakeable about what you are, thinking, “This is all there is!”

passage from article: This is the final step in letting go of any attempt to categorize our experience. The experience which comes out of this is non-thought. Out of this comes a confidence of possibilities within ourselves. We are increasingly able to act without second thoughts and do what is appropriate. In other words, we come to know the stillness of the mind that no longer depends solely on conceptual processes to formulate responses to the world of experience.

In response to the earnest request of George Draffan, an experienced follower of the way, Ken McLeod, a blind man who stumbles over his own feet, translated this excerpt from Machik’s autobiography in 2006 in Los Angeles.

passage from text: What joy! Samsaric ways are senseless:they are the seeds of suffering. Conventional ways are pointless. Focus on what is sound and true. Majestic outlook is beyond all fixation. Majestic practice is no distraction. Majestic behavior is no action or effort. The fruition is there when you are free from hope and fear.

Verses 15-21; participant’s response to last week’s question: what’s the use of non-referential experience?; find your own motivation; view, practice, behaviour, result; absolutely nothing to save us; actionless action; experiencing the pain of letting go of the conventional way of seeing the world; defining ourselves as what we oppose; recognizing sheer clarity; meditation instruction: in addition to first two steps add open your heart to everything you experience and ask the question – what experiences?

The value of retreats; making the transition from retreat to ordinary life; you can’t take this experience with you; finding the peace and clarity that exists in any situation; defining awakening as experiencing whatever arises as expressions of peace and clarity.

Intention and working the edge of practice, the three difficult points as described in The Great Path of Awakening, being specific in one’s effort, faith as the willingness to open to whatever arises, finding clarity through relaxing and resting in what arises, clarity as the nature of mind, meditation instruction on complete experiencing